Thomas
Berger, one of the most-respected American novelists of the last
few decades, and the author of the classic anti-Western, Little
Big Man, and the acclaimed Reinhart trilogy, set his sights
on the conventions of the PI genre, with mixed results. This P.I.
parody/travesty Who is Teddy Villanova? (1978), featuring
New York eye RUSSELL WREN, was praised by a few critics,
but most felt it was overblown, convoluted or, worse, just tedious.
Baker and Nietzel, in One
Hundred and One Knights, called it "unreadable and
silly." Still, Berger stood by it, and even wrote a sequel.

Wren is an unlicensed P.I. with an unlicensed gun who scrapes
by. He has the usual shabby life, and the usual shabby clients,
for the most part, and his M.O. consists mainly of being hit on
the head. He's hired to track down an international criminal,
Teddy Villanova, but somehow he keeps getting mistaken for him.
The plot swirls and swoops, and doesn't seem to go anywhere, although
Chandler would have been pleased to see so many men coming in
so many doors with so many guns...

UNDER OATH

"An anti-hero sandwich of low culture, high browsiness
and pop angst."
(John Leonard, The New York Times)